Page 118 of Shades of Grey & Gold

He said he’d always get to me.

Cal is Cal.

He went to Ellison for me. He went back for me.

He’ll come.

Except their words move like oil under my skin:what if he doesn’t?

What if I built him out of hope the way I built Patrick out of excuses? Patrick would have saved himself, saved his reputation, saved whatever he could salvage. He would have stepped over me so he wouldn’t come out of this smelling like…

Old kitchen grease.

I breathe. In. Out. The room steadies and I lift my eyes.

Through a gap in the boxes stacked by the far wall—an old fryer oil delivery, the labels long peeled—I see a vent panel shiver. I narrow my eyes, trying to see movement again; trying to make this not a hallucination from lack of sleep.

Two screws loosen but don’t fall. I blink. The tears have stopped and I can clearly see a shadow behind the mesh of the vent.

And eyes become visible as the vent shifts down a few inches.

Eyes I know from my dreams.

Cal lifts a finger to his mouth as he crawls out and sets the vent cover to the side.

My bottom lip trembles. I nod the smallest nod I’ve ever made. A tear falls, relief instead of fear, and camouflages the way my breathing changes.

He glides where the light doesn’t reach and I can’t see him anymore.

Tile, shadow, box, shadow, breath.

He settles behind me; the heat of him sends adrenaline through my veins, replacing the relief, and I look across the room towards the last place I heard the voices, but I can’t see the men.

Metal touches the plastic at my wrists. A blade slides and plastic snaps.

Don’t move, his breath says almost inaudibly against my hair. Out loud, he says nothing, but he has his fingers wrapped around both my wrists, soothing the places the plastic was cutting into, holding me in place.

The men argue in a language I don’t know, vowels hard, consonants like knives.

“When I tell you to run, you run,” he murmurs, the softest thread at my ear. “And you don’t look back, Max.”

His fingers find mine and I consider glancing behind me. He squeezes once. “Squeeze my fingers if you understand.”

I squeeze. Once, then twice, because the tears won’t stop. I don’t want to let go, but his fingers slide from mine anyway.

He is gone from behind me and then he’s not—he’s everywhere, voice from the dark:

“How we doing here, boys?”

I straighten and push up on my knees. Every muscle and joint aches and screams from being tied up for who knows how long. I look over the boxes at the scene in front of me.

Three heads whip. Four guns lift.

One trains on me; two on the shadow that becomes Cal as he steps into the low-lit kitchen, his gun already up, stance like a wall. He’s between me and the men before I can stand, and air floods my lungs in relief.

“Max. Up.”

I stand. My hands are free; the plastic loops are on the floor behind me like shed skin.